Today's industries depend on automation, mass production, and reliable output for the commercial success of their products. These factors, however, do not come cheap as they require highly sophisticated equipment in order to maintain the desired yield, throughput, and reliability. Generally, almost all such equipment comprises dedicated systems designed for specific tasks. These systems are typically extremely expensive and require advanced skills to operate.
Unfortunately, such systems are not appropriate in every application, such as those in which lower volumes of products are to be manufactured. In such cases, flexible manufacturing is the only solution that can offer the pathway to rapid, cost-effective production. This flexibility is generally considered to fall into two categories: machine flexibility and routing flexibility. The first category, machine flexibility, refers to the system's ability to be changed to produce new product types and the ability to change the order of operations executed on a part. The second category, routing flexibility, relates to the ability to use multiple machines to perform the same operation on a part, as well as the system's ability to absorb large-scale changes in volume, capacity, or capability. The advantages of flexible manufacturing systems include reduced manufacturing times, lower cost per unit, greater labor productivity, greater machine efficiency, reduced parts inventories, better adaptability to operations, and shorter lead times.
While such advantages can be obtained from flexible manufacturing systems, the systems have been difficult to achieve because of the cost to implement them and the need for substantial pre-planning. It can therefore be appreciated that it would be desirable to have a flexible manufacturing system that can be implemented more cheaply and with less pre-planning.